Well-known Venezuelan architect Fruto Vivas (seen in the photo) has been in the news lately: one of his most famous works, the former Venezuelan pavillion of the Expo 2000 (known as “the flower of Venezuela”) has been front and center in the ongoing political battle between Lara State governor Henri Falcon and the central government…
With the transformation of the Venezuelan landscape in recent decades, the figure of the motorcyclist (motorizado) has become almost omnipresent not only in the largest cities, but also right in the countryside. Last December, while travelling to Merida through the TrasAndina roadway, the car made a technical stop in Barinitas. During that brief time I…
As long-time readers know, traffic in Caracas is one of our favorite topics. This video I caught today reminds me that we haven’t written about it in a while. So on the day when Maduro signs what is, more or less, an agreement to form a commission to study the design and further implementation of…
Accompanying article here. The money quote It turns out that the profusion of oil wealth might actually make the roads more dangerous due to something political scientists call the rentier state effect. Individuals in such countries, who often live off lavish subsidies, may be more accustomed to seeing the government as something that gives out…
Not long ago, the Caracas housing complex known as Ciudad Caribia was being touted by the then-living comandante supremo as the model of a “21st Century socialist city”, but its brief existence has been pretty overwhelmed with problems since late 2006, when its construction began. Of the 20,000 planned apartments, only 1,666 have been delivered…
Last week, Aragua State Governor Tareck El Aissami said that the El Libertador Air Force Base (near Maracay) would become a civilian airport for domestic and international flights. You can guess how it will be called… that’s right: the Hugo Chávez International Airport. (Will it have duty free shops? Will it be painted red? Will it…
Almost a year ago, I wrote a post about the ordeal that drivers in Caracas and other Venezuelan cities face every day just to find an available parking spot. Well, at least 40,000 parking spaces in Caracas have been lost between 2005 and 2012, according to Benigno Luis Marco, head of the National Association of…
As many of you, I watched Nicolás Maduro’s speech last night in awe. Not only was it a rambling, incoherent mess; it also made clear what everyone seems to be catching on to – that Maduro is insane. For me, the most galling part was when he blamed the opposition for causing the electricity crisis.…
A friend of the family who works in construction tells me about the ordeal he has to go through lately to get a few bags of cement. “Sometimes, I get a phone call from an associate who tells me to go to Quibor (a town 45 minutes west of Barquisimeto). But by the time I…
For the residents of a couple of recently-opened housing development in Caracas, their brand new homes are no longer bringing them joy, but really big headaches. One, in El Morro (Petare), was apparently built over a geological fault line, which has recently caused problems with the water pipelines. On the other side of the capital,…
A fortnight ago, one major public hospital of Western Caracas (the Periférico de Coche) was close to shutting down. Doctors and patients staged a loud protest from both inside and outside the hospital. 24 hours later, Nicolás Maduro himself made a “surprise inspection”. The Chavernment took over control of the hospital from themselves, as the Health…
The “Torre de David” highrise in Caracas got a lot of attention recently thanks in part to John Lee Anderson’s great article in the New Yorker, to the point that its residents have suspended all outside visits. But it’s not the only vertical squat in Venezuela. There are unfinished buildings in other cities where squatters have…
Today marks the six-month “anniversary” of the explosion in the Amuay Refining Complex. Aside from being a massive tragedy, Amuay could have also been responsible for the devaluation of the bolivar. These two events might seem to be unrelated at first. The first caused a fire that took days to put out and left dozens…
A fire broke out last week in the improvised shelter for displaced people located in La Rinconada, Caracas’s racetrack. After the fire was put out, the shelter spent two days without any electricity. Many families are still living in the racetrack’s main stands more than two years after they lost their homes by floodings in…
(A Spanish version of this post appears in Prodavinci) The New Yorker published a shattering article this week by Jon Lee Anderson, about Caracas’ slow, brutal decadence. The city Anderson paints, seen through his foreign eyes, is known by all but it remains gloom-inducing: informal barrios where the only rule of law is violence; middle-class…
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